As his mother would later recall, even as a small boy Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzmán Loera fought for a better life. Born into a rural backwater in one of the poorest parts of Mexico, he worked the poppy fields from a young age and through a mixture of ambition, business acumen, and sheer ruthlessness became the richest and most powerful drug trafficker in the world. But who was El Chapo? To those who benefited from his generosity, he was a Robin Hood figure who persistently outwitted the authorities, twice escaping from maximum-security prisons. To others, he was pure evil. At his sensational trial in 2018, prosecuting attorney Robert Capers described him as 'a small cancerous tumour that metastasized into a full-blown scourge'. Full of twists and turns, cash-filled suitcases and lavish lifestyles, betrayals and tit-for-killings, this is a rags-to-riches story truly in keeping with our times. Book jacket.